The Ghana Bar Association (GBA) has expressed concern over a section of the Presidential Transition Act which terminates the tenure of all appointees to boards and governing councils of the country whenever a new president takes office.
“What this implies is that every four years we start developing, and at the end of the day, we go down and fresh people take over. We are always coming down and starting the experiment all over again. This does not augur well for us as a nation,” the President of the association, Nene Amegatcher, said.
He was addressing the Institute of Economic Affairs’ Winner-Takes-All Committee, which is soliciting views from various stakeholders as part of ongoing consultations on the issue by the think tank.
The committee, under the chairmanship of the Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra, Archbishop Gabriel Charles Palmer-Buckle, was set up to re-examine Ghana’s Winner-Takes-All system, and to supervise the conduct of a nationwide public consultation process.
The concerns
While admitting that the President had the right to appoint ministers and other public office holders to help him run his government, Mr Amegatcher said terminating the appointment of board members, governing councils and heads of statutory institutions affected continuity and denied such institutions experienced hands.
The concern comes against the backdrop of the fact that sometimes, it takes more than three months, after the coming into office of a new administration, to appoint members of boards to steer the affairs of such institutions.
He said a way out of the situation was for the establishment of conventions.
Explaining his position, he said: “When these conventions are established, they supplement what is in a written document.”
“A written document may provide that the President appoints the Chief Justice and ministers. However, if the president is going to appoint an Attorney General who is going to work with the legal profession, nothing stops us from developing a convention so that some kind of consultation can take place.”
The consultation is simply to seek views and ideas. These ideas are not binding on the president but, at least, they will help the president make informed decisions in the interest of the country.
He pledged that the association would take the issue of the winner-takes-all to its regional branches to collate views which would be fed into the GBA’s position paper on the matter to the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).
“No group of people who are tasked to draft the constitution can foresee every situation in the future and make provision for it,” he said.
Mr Amegatcher bemoaned the political polarization, stating that “some of us speak with heavy hearts; whatever you want to do in the interest of this country is seen with political eyes.”
“People who have views and ideas, because they respect themselves and do not want to give themselves away, would just sit back and fold their arms. That is not the way to develop the country.”
Case against winner-takes-all
Political observers, including the IEA, believe that as a result of this system, Ghana nearly suffered social and political breakdown through the perceived monopoly of political and economic power by the winning party, and experienced threats of violence and legal challenge to the tenure of the Presidency and the electoral system in the last two general elections.
